I'm not sure how many deer i saw today. Just after lunch i looked up and a deer was grazing just outside my window. I was delighted and watched as she ate up a shrub i'm trying to kill and grazed on clover. Then she went and nipped up a plant i've been watching to find out what blooms it might have. The plant is going to have to go back to work on growing its reproductive organs again. (Some sort of aster, is what i expect.) I saw the deer stare down the eastern side of the house, so i went to another window and saw a second deer back in the glade. (So, two unique deer.) Then the first deer went to my corn. I went to the front porch and yelled, "Hay, that's my corn!" and the deer simply sauntered out of the patch. Hmph.

Later, another deer was moving around the garden and looked like it was nibbling on the hibiscus. This time the deer was gone by the time i opened the front door. Same deer? A third?

And then later i saw a deer skirting along the north edge of the woods, slipping in to shadow at the corner -- and then another deer dashed into the same gap.

So possibly five deer, or two busy deer. The same pair we've caught grazing on the west side of the house, perhaps?

I've not seen deer moving around in the day since last summer. Today's attempt at research on deer movements didn't help explain why this might be a seasonal behavior. The best guess i could make would be that the deer are bedded down somewhere near by. One writer mentioned that the deer don't seem to stay bedded down for longer than two hours before getting up, stretching, peeing, and nibbling before going back to doze. Yet, why would they only be coming to the yard now? Unless the woods are TOO much of a thickety-mess to manage in the summer?

Cardinal still nesting. A couple visits from Luigi to my work table today. The volunteer tomato plants in the raised beds look like they may actually be quite productive. The most sprawling plant clearly is one of those grape tomatoes. I hope it does well!

Hoping things will even off after the last bump on our home calendar last night. My travel and other disruptions are now over, and the horizon reveals some pleasures. Friday i will go on a road trip with my parents (or my Dad, at least). And i realized that we can make it to the eclipse without the trip funds we had begun to set aside, but spent on the move. Not to the Tetons, but the path of totality isn't that far away. I've gotten a hotel room for us in the western part of the state, twenty minutes from the path. I've picked out an ideal location, now need to figure out weather patterns and what fall back locations might look like.